Snow, yarn and other such ramblings

There's been a spot of colourful hooky going on in these parts.

After a bit of pootling on Pinterest and various and delightful craft blogs, I discovered a newish craze for granny square blankets emerging.  Aha! I thought; I could do with one of those very things for my own sweet bed!  However, Christmas was upon us, and I had neither the time nor inclination to contemplate a new blanket project, so I filed the idea away for future reference...fast forward to January, and I eventually caved in and bought a new stash of Stylecraft Special DK wool to set about making a granny square blanket of my very own.  My heart had been well and truly taken the moment I cast my eyes upon this beautiful blanket here although there are many fine specimens to be found upon the interweb as I'm sure you will discover.

I cannot lie to you, I was so smitten with Sandra's colourway that I ordered pretty much the same shades of wool that she had used for her blanket.  And it's coming on a treat; its a fine way to pass a happy hour on a winters eve, curled up on the sofa watching Miranda, gigglesnorting like billy-o and knocking up a few squares in deliciously vintage coloured yarn.

I'm using the join-as-you-go method, fiddly as heck, but saving me a lot of sewing at the end which can be a tad time consuming to say the least.

During the day, I've been working my little socks off on some new pieces of art for my solo exhibition...would you like a peek?  You would?  Here you are then:

The Coastguard Cottages

Beside the Waves

I also have a plan to create some coastal inspired characters on some small box canvases, with an element of collage and stamped text about them.  I'm mighty excited by this sudden flurry of inspiration and I'm making sure I write down lots of notes about these ideas in my book, should they happen to dissolve and disappear from my busy little head forever.

After a colourful week, our world suddenly turned very grey and white.  The snow finally came to our little corner of the world and we decided that we would go out and enjoy ourselves enormously.

There was sledging and snowman making, the obligatory snowball fights and wanderings down the back garden to see the river which had turned into a magical winter wonderland...

I love the sculptural shapes of the branches and seed heads, and that glorious blue sky!

As I work, I see my little feathered friends making more frequent visits to the feeder (which is hung a couple of feet away from my window).  I love to watch them, and wonder how something so small can survive such terribly cold nights...

Another feathered soul paid us a visit too...can you spot him?  He's a regular visitor, and can often be seen stooping in the shallows, waiting to catch a plump trout for his lunch.

Back inside after our snowy meanderings, hot chocolate of the best kind, topped with the squirtiest of cream and tiniest of marshmallows is consumed and jammies are put on.  It's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but it's a snow day from school and there's no need to be going out again; may as well just cosy up indoors and do a spot of painting with C...

...and on a whim, I dug out some papier mache style hearts and painted a whimsical little Valentine's scene.  These hearts are secretly magnets, but would look rather dandy in a nice box frame I think.

So my week is only just begun, but already it is filled with the simplest and nicest of things.  And if it needed icing on the cake, it came in the form of an email from my lovely agent, who wrote to tell me that three pieces of my artwork have been accepted for licensing by a client, and therefore shall become cards or suchlike.  I am delirious with delight, because this is another one of my dreams come true.

And dreams do come true you know, if you believe they will.

I'll see you again soon, have a wonderful week and thank you for coming to see me today.

Love J x

The Winner Is...

Hello Everyone!

My goodness - Before I announce the winner of my Gorgeous Christmassy Giveaway, I just want to say how wonderful all of your responses were - I was blown away by how many of you shared your Christmas moments here, and I enjoyed reading each and every one of them.

I noticed that the majority of us love lots of similar things about this time of year ~ twinkling tree lights, gathering with family and friends, remembering those no longer with us, carols and church services, and one that touched me especially was the comment from Nicole who had premature twins that were not expected to survive...they will be having their very first Christmas this year!  Stories like that bring home what it's all about, so thank you to each and every one of you for making this giveaway so very special.

Anyway...without any further rambling ~ I've just had a little visit to the Random Number Generator and typed in 106 - yes, 106 of you dropped in to take part - pressed the button...and the number that popped out was...

Number 4

Rachael, from Made With Love, you are my winner (big happy smiles!)

Will you drop me a line to tell me which print you would like ~ remember, you can choose from any of the ones on my Fine Art Prints page up to the value of £14.00.  I do hope you see something that you like!

For the rest of you who entered, thank you so much!

This week has seen the arrival of heaps of snow, the heaviest of which fell last night.  I reckon we have about 30cm or so, not to mention the knee high drifts!!  Needless to say, the Small One hasn't been to her school up the village - two reasons:  we couldn't make it, and she has a nasty chest infection complete with barking cough.  To keep her busy, we got to work doing Important Letter Writing...

We're working on the Good Girl part, as apparently nasty coughs create a new level of crabbiness not encountered before!!  

For some reason (it's probably to do with the snow and all your seasonal comments), Christmas spirit is creeping in quicker than usual.  At the weekend, we drove out to Castleton to show the Little One the Christmas trees.  It was bitterly cold, but you couldn't help be inspired by the beauty of Mam Tor covered with a gauze of fine snow, and the bright cheery lights of the trees.  We have visited this village since we were children, and it's a lovely thing to be able to share it with my own wee one...

...just starting to turn on the lights...

...the Three Roofs cafe, and Peveril Castle up on the hill...I love the silhouettes of those skeletal trees against the white sky, and the welcome twinkle of the warm white lights.

Just before I go, I want to tell you about a little offer I have especially for my Facebook Likers and my Blog Followers/Subscribers...you can choose a personalised, hand stamped message for free, when you purchase one of my A5 individual, signed Christmas cards.  Up to 30 letters, any wording you like!!  The stamp is a vintage typewriter style which I think looks lovely - I hope you agree!

You can click here to find out more.

I'm currently busy putting packs of cards together to mail out, so not much time to paint right now. However, I'm delighted at the responses I've had to them - these will continue to be available to order until the 15th December (for UK customers) and for overseas, today is the last date for orders (so I can meet my international post date of the 6th which should get them to you in plenty of time).

Well - if you're still reading, thank you!  Thank you also for stopping by, your visit here is very much appreciated.  I do hope you will drop by and say 'Hello' again soon, it's always a pleasure to see you here!

Sending huge scoops of love your way,

Keep warm

Julia x x x

Hibernating and Creative Business

Hello friends :)

Well, what a week it has been in the UK for weather!! I look out of the window and what do I see? Snow. I turn on my TV and what do I see? A special program entitled the BIG FREEZE dedicated to this icy cold spell!! People are a bit obsessed aren't they, so today, instead of giving you heaps of snowy photographs to look at, Im going to show you what we made when it snowed hard for 14 hours here the other day.


And it involves the Queen of strawberry jams, Little Scarlet.

Me and the Little One got busy making scones, because I had a yearning for Cream Teas and summer, I was totally brassed off with all things white and cold.

And we decided to use different cutters to make our plain scones, ending up with hearts and rabbits...and a couple of unidentifiable ones that a Small Person was tremendously proud of!

If you've ever been lucky enough to get a jar of Little Scarlet jam, you will know where Im coming from with my rapturous description of it. Once the lid is off, tiny wild strawberries of the most sweetest kind practically burst out of the jar - indeed this is not jam, it is a jar packed with strawberries for there is hardly any room for the jammy bit.


Its not cheap, but sometimes its good to indulge isn't it, and on that snowy day we buttered fresh warm scones, and piled oodles of tiny strawberries on top and watched the whirling white snow fall out of a heavy grey sky, although our thoughts were perhaps far away right then, in a tea garden far south of this Yorkshire border.

Anyway, I lied - I said I wasn't going to show you any snow pictures but I couldn't resist a few - its so very, very pretty when the sun is shining on a fresh downpour of the stuff!

This is across the road from our house, the tremendous trees are weighed down. Its bitterly cold standing on the doorstep so I hurry indoors....

...but not for long - the Little One wants to go and make a snowman, so we navigate the back garden and are both rather surprised how deep it is, she in particular as its well over her knees and she's never seen anything quite like it!

The sunlight glows through the snow that has fallen between the boughs of our little flowering cherry tree...hard to imagine that in only a matter of weeks this will be frothing over with pink blossom.

The river looks very pretty, peaty black and icy cold against the bright white snow. To add to the theme of black and white was a little dipper who was out braving the weather, he was standing on a stone watching us before he took off under the bridge, his little white bib a blurry flash as he flew by.

Well, following my last post there have been a couple of my readers interested in the books I mentioned, and silly me, I should really have put the titles in that post for you! Never the less, here they are now for those of you who are interested in following the creative business dream:

The Creative Entrepreneur
by Lisa Sonora Beam

Creating a Life Worth Living
Carol Lloyd

Make Your Creative Dreams Real
Sark

The Small Business Start Up Workbook
Cheryl D Rickman.

If you click the links it will take you to the amazon page so you can read up on them a bit more and see if they are what you are after.


The top three books are written with a real focus on creativity, and include some great tools and exercises which teach you how to become a businesswoman (or man), and make your business real, one which makes money and brings customers...sound good?? It is.


These books also suggest keeping a journal/art journal to encourage your creativity. If you can, take the time to really work through the exercises. The good thing is that you can do this in your own time, and when you do sit down and answer the questions and think about what you're reading, you begin to learn things (which sounds obvious, but Im the best in the world for skipping the practical exercise bit, I always want to be at the finish post first, but Im realising that these people can teach me things I don't know and through making an effort Ive learnt more in the last week than I did in a whole year of going round doing the same stuff yet expecting different results!!)

The last book I mentioned is more practical nuts and bolts, crammed full of information about marketing and promoting yourself and starting a biz from scratch. Very good.


So there we are. Id love to hear from any of you who decide to work through one of the books Ive mentioned here. It can be quite a challenge starting off in business, but its not impossible and perhaps the ones of you who have decided to grow a business properly this year might like to share experiences here? Sometimes its nice to have someplace to chat about our journeys and what we've learned, and it can also be really helpful for others who are doing the same thing!


Let me know what you think - you know where to find me!! :D


So here's to the creative journey, wherever it may take you (be it kitchen to bake cake, or reaching for the stars and becoming the next Deborah Meaden :)


Big love to you,
Keep warm,
Eat nice stuff :)

Julia xxx